I didn’t recall when today’s theme music came out. I guessed about 1966, ’67. I was wrong. It was 1969. I remembered it the other day, when I was reading about Oregon’s marijuana glut a few days ago. Oregon has grown about one million pounds of surplus weed.

“Little Green Bag” by the George Baker Selection sounds weirdly like it’s from several different eras of pop-rock. Its beginning is often used to define cool in a movie or television show. A group moves in slow music, typically turning toward the camera as the music plays. This was done in Reservoir Dogs and the BBC television show, Red Dwarf. That song’s beginning, with its bass line and isolated percussion, is cool.

I always remembered the next lines, though, thinking, hey, he’s looking for a bag of grass, as in marijuana. It sounded like he dropped it and has gone back for it, except he wasn’t singing bag, he was singing back, like, greenback. Which, I realized in one history leson in school, was dollars. So he was looking for dollars, not grass. That amused me, but perplexed my friends, who didn’t know what the hell song I was singing.

I’d never seen the video before today. They look very uncomfortable to me, like they’re self-consciously cringing inside.